Well, it seems only fitting to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day! However, in spirit of keeping this "lover's holiday" real, we thought we'd share a story that we read in the local newspaper yesterday! Remember, we can still celebrate the love God gave to us as a couple without over-sensationalizing a particular day! So, take a few moments to read this story written by Cliff Radel. Then, take some time today to honor the one that God gave you in the testament of marriage. Let them know you are thankful to God for placing them in your life. Let them know that it's not only one day of the year that you will reflect on the love you have for one another, but rather every day of the year!
Holding on in love 70 years later.
Written by Cliff Radel, printed February 13, 2012 Cincinnati Enquirer
After 70 years of marriage, Martha and Joe Jones still know the thrill of holding hands with the one you love. “This feels wonderful!” Martha exclaimed as she looked down at her fingers intertwined with those of the man she married 70 years ago on Valentine’s Day. “She is my wife,” Joe said. “She is my life.” Martha squeezed his hand a little tighter. Their fingers glowed.
Apart, Joe’s 92-year-old fingers and Martha’s 91-year-old digits felt cool to the touch. Together, they radiated warmth. “That’s because we love one another,” she declared in an accent that shows she grew up in flat, Indiana farm country. “We can feel the love through our fingers.”
The couple sat shoulder-to-shoulder on their living-room sofa, at home in the Hartwell retirement community where they’ve lived since moving from their farm in Alquina, Ind., in October. Their heads rested on a cotton blanket covering the back of the sofa. Southeastern Indiana scenes are woven into the blanket and the border lists the names of area farming communities. Each little town and crossroads, from Dunlapsville (Martha’s hometown) to the exotically named Lotus, is connected by a heart.
Martha and Joe are also linked by hearts. That showed when their hands effortlessly reached out and meshed. No glances were needed. Each mate instinctively knew the whereabouts of the other partner’s fingers. As they joined hands, Joe beamed. Martha sighed and held on tightly to his right hand. That’s the hand that caused them to fall in love. That’s the hand she’s been holding onto in marriage for 70 years, and in love for 74.
Their hands and their eyes first met in the fall of 1938 when she was 18-year-old nurse and he was an 19-year-old farm boy with a mangled right hand. “I got my hand stuck in a corn picker,” Joe recalled. “The corn stalks were all rotten and frozen together that fall. The corn picker machine was separating the stalks from the ears of corn. They got all stuck together. I knew not to stick my hand into the stalks. But if you just gave them a push, they’d go right through. ”He gave the stalks a push. But, his glove got caught. The stalks went through. And, so did his gloved hand.
As soon as the accident happened, his father stopped the corn picker. Joe’s hand was stuck in the blades. He stayed there for two hours until the family doctor arrived from Oxford, Ohio. The doctor gave him a shot of morphine and had the farmers reverse the blades to free Joe’s hand. After wrapping the teenager’s wounds in gauze, the doctor drove Joe to the nearest hospital, where a young woman named Martha Fisher happened to be a nurse. She had already had six farmers on her ward with similar hand injuries. “It was,” Martha recalled in a hushed voice, “a bad year for men who worked with the corn.”
Surgeons at the hospital wanted to amputate Joe’s hand. His family doctor told them to operate and put his hand in a banjo cast with wires spreading his fingers. To this day, Joe clearly remembers coming out of surgery and becoming a believer in love at first sight.
“When I came to from the anesthetic, someone was standing over me and rubbing my shoulder,” he said. “I opened my eyes and saw Martha. I told myself: ‘This is a pretty woman. I’d like to marry her.’ ” His nurse was also smitten. She looked into his blue eyes and saw “a compassionate man, a caring man, an affectionate man.” She told herself: “That’s the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.” And, she has.
But first he had to heal, then he had to ask her out. The latter took some doing because he had to break up with the woman he was dating. She made it easy for him. “She came up to me one Sunday,” Joe said, “and told me she was getting married.” One week later, he went on his first date with his former nurse. Their courtship ended when she became Mrs. Martha Jones on Feb. 14, 1942. “Can’t say as to why we chose Feb. 14,” Joe said, grinning slyly. “It was a Saturday. The church in Liberty, Indiana, was open.” He farmed for a while and drove trucks for a living before retiring as a newspaper deliveryman in 1989 at the age of 80. Martha hung up her nurse’s cap in 1982.
“The years have gone by so fast,” Martha said. “We’ll be celebrating our 75th anniversary before you know it.” That drew a chuckle from Joe. “We have a lot to live for,” Martha insisted. “We have two great sons, Jim (of White Oak) and Charles (of Davenport, Iowa), two great daughters-in-law, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.” And, they have each other. “We’ve been together so long because we work for one another. He helps me and I help him,” Martha said. “He helps me with the cooking.” And she works from time to time as his nurse. “She took care of me when I had open-heart surgery,” Joe said, “and when I had a pacemaker put in. She’s still a great nurse and I love her.” Martha has often been asked if all of her patients fell love with her. “Only one,” she replies. When he’s “the one,” that’s all she needs.
